8mm Forum: Help Me To Identify Film

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Posted by Maurice Leakey (Member # 916) on May 05, 2014, 03:08 AM:

The 400' box label reads "Complete sequence from an American TV Childrens' Show. Not unlike the Muppets featuring a young girl and puppet-like characters."

This appears to be a complete sequence which runs about five minutes with fade-in and fade-out. Excellent Kodachrome but with no date code.

A young blonde girl about eight-years old dressed in a sort of Alice in Wonderland dress sits on a large green chair. She introduces herself as Chris and then introduces the puppets around her, Reggie the Walrus, Poindexter the Dog, Hester a white furry rabbit (?) and two small mice Pip and Squeak.

There is banter between them and then finally Chris sings a song which perhaps could be called "Keep Your Word" or perhaps, "Promises". She is accompanied by an unseen piano.

I have done a large amount of research using Google and the only program which does show some likeness to the walrus is "Luci's Toy Shop", which aired in Columbus, Ohio, from 1960 to 1972.

Does anyone remember a program based on my description?

Posted by Dominique De Bast (Member # 3798) on May 05, 2014, 01:47 PM:

A show like "Luci's Toy Shop" was "Mister Rogers' Neighborhood", there were probably others. With only one sequence of a show it may be very difficult to identify it.

Posted by Maurice Leakey (Member # 916) on May 06, 2014, 02:23 AM:

Thank you, Dominique, for the suggestion which I have examined. Unfortunately, there is no mention of the quoted puppets which are on my film.

Posted by John Barbour (Member # 3777) on May 06, 2014, 10:15 AM:

I did some searching via Proquest and didn't really find anything. You may have already gotten this far but Google came up with a book called:

"Hi There, Boys and Girls! America's Local Children's TV Programs" by Tim Hollis.

You can search through some, but not all, of the book. I didn't see anything that matched your descriptions.
Google Tim Hollis and you'll get to a BirminghamRewound.com that has his contact info. Judging from that page and his flickr, he loves this kind of stuff, so maybe he'd be worth contacting.

Good luck!

Posted by Maurice Leakey (Member # 916) on May 06, 2014, 12:17 PM:

John

Many thanks for these details. I have found Tim Hollis' email address and will contact him in due course.

Meanwhile, I have located a second-hand copy of the book on British Amazon for £1.03 (US $1.75) and at that price I just had to buy it !

Posted by Maurice Leakey (Member # 916) on May 10, 2014, 05:33 AM:

The book has arrived, a pristine copy at such a bargain price.

I have found the answer to my question from the index under "Poindexter the Hound".

There on page 263 we have details of station WSM-TV from Nashville and the work of puppeteer, Tom Tichenor (1923-1992).

"His most popular WSM character was a lovable hound dog named Poindexter, who seems to have been part of most of Tichenor's productions for the station."

He left his puppets to Nashville Public Library where there is now a permanent collection of them on display.

Posted by Dominique De Bast (Member # 3798) on May 10, 2014, 06:22 AM:

I like when it ends like this.

Posted by John Barbour (Member # 3777) on May 15, 2014, 02:17 PM:

This is great!

Googling "Tom Tichenor" brings up a ton of stuff, including this blog which features a picture of his puppets with a super-young Jerry Orbach in the Broadway musical Carnival: Tom Tichenor Carnival Puppets

If Carnival's "Horrible Henry" is your show's "Reggie the Walrus," then that piece of felt has got a six degrees of separation that rivals Kevin Bacon.

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